Month: August 2014

Team Obama now accepting President’s new, more selective appeal*.

See if you can figure out the flaw in this strategy.

In an election that Republicans want to make all about President Barack Obama, the White House is determined to make him all but disappear in the battleground states that matter.

The White House is putting the finishing touches on a post-Labor Day schedule that will send the president to states where he’s still popular, such as: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California, Obama officials and Democratic operatives said this week.

Continue reading Team Obama now accepting President’s new, more selective appeal*.

Boston Globe finds Charlie Baker ahead of Martha Coakley in MA-GOV. …Huh.

Keep a real close eye on the Baker-Coakley Massachusett’s governor’s race, assuming that Martha Coakley and Charlie Baker win their respective nominations in a couple of weeks*. If the general election is going to cook off, the first warning signs would start appearing right about now:

coakley-baker

Continue reading Boston Globe finds Charlie Baker ahead of Martha Coakley in MA-GOV. …Huh.

One hopes that the viciously-beaten George Galloway is now asking himself, “Why do they hate me?”

Of course, one cannot condone violence.

:pause:

But…

Outspoken MP George Galloway has left hospital with severe bruising after he was punched repeatedly in the face and called ‘Hitler’ in a west London street attack, says spokesman.

The Respect MP for Bradford West was posing for pictures in Notting Hill when he was ‘leapt on’ and assaulted last night by a man yelling comments about the Holocaust.

He has been receiving death threats and hate mail after calling for Bradford to be ‘declared an Israel-free zone’ three weeks ago, according to his spokesman.

…I keep getting told that these incidents do not happen in a vacuum.

Continue reading One hopes that the viciously-beaten George Galloway is now asking himself, “Why do they hate me?”

Two depressing things about Obama’s sudden return to DC.

Here’s the background:

And here are the two depressing things:

  • That President Obama thinks that going back to DC while the world is melting down instead of staying where he was after a busy day of fundraising* is an improvement in Obama’s behavior.
  • And that it actually is**.

Barack Obama: a man who does not so much believe in being graded on a curve as he more or less demands it.

Moe Lane

*Because God forbid that Barack Obama temporarily not fund-raise while there are bad things happening.

**Note: I am not saying that Obama’s behavior is good.  Just that it’s slightly better than what he was doing before.

The New York Times’ meaningless refusal to endorse Andrew Cuomo.

I mean, it shouldn’t be meaningless:

New York had had enough corruption, [Andrew Cuomo] said, and he was going to put a stop to it. “Job 1 is going to be to clean up Albany,” he said, “and make the government work for the people.”

Mr. Cuomo became governor on that platform and [the NYT made a silly claim here], but he failed to perform Job 1. The state government remains as subservient to big money as ever, and Mr. Cuomo resisted and even shut down opportunities to fix it. Because he broke his most important promise, we have decided not to make an endorsement for the Democratic primary on Sept. 9.

…but it is, for the basic and simple reason that Andrew Cuomo will win the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York; and once that happens the endorsement of him by the NYT in the general election will be as inevitable as the sunrise. Put another way, Glenn Thrush is precisely right, here: Continue reading The New York Times’ meaningless refusal to endorse Andrew Cuomo.

Alleged ISIS laptop had a checklist for creating bioweapons.

Background: …well, read my friend and RedState colleague Aaron Gardner, who wrote on this subject himself (including stuff about the laptop mentioned below).  But specifically… Syrian rebels (against pretty much both Assad and ISIS these days) reportedly found a laptop and handed it off to Foreign Policy magazine.  Said laptop apparently turned out to have quite a number of alarming files in it.  How alarming?  Well, FP is calling it “The Laptop of Doom:”

The laptop’s contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations — and practical training on how to carry out the Islamic State’s deadly campaigns. They include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another.

But after hours upon hours of scrolling through the documents, it became clear that the ISIS laptop contains more than the typical propaganda and instruction manuals used by jihadists. The documents also suggest that the laptop’s owner was teaching himself about the use of biological weaponry, in preparation for a potential attack that would have shocked the world.

Continue reading Alleged ISIS laptop had a checklist for creating bioweapons.

Bad call by the Florida Democratic party with regard to The Shark Tank, here.

On the one hand, I understand why they tossed The Shark Tank out of a campaign event on general principles: Javier Manjarres is a born troublemaker*. On the other hand, the Florida Democratic party then had to deal with flak from local news people, given that Javier is in fact local media.  On the gripping hand? …Well, Florida Democrats did nominate Charlie Crist, so their judgement wasn’t really all that great in the first place.

Seriously, how bad is it for Florida Democrats right now if they don’t dare have an open media policy?

Moe Lane

*I do a little of that myself, hopefully.

Let me solve the ‘original Star Wars is not available’ dispute.

I have absolutely, positively, I respect these people utterly, no problems with those who are reconstructing the original Star Wars movie frame by frame because George Lucas is a frustrated would-be auteur who can’t stand the fact that he will go down in movie history for creating the greatest space opera of his century.  But the man is a would-be auteur who got bought out by the Mouse.  For an insane amount of money – and if Disney didn’t lock down the redistribution rights to George Lucas’s cocktail napkin scribbles in the process, well, I can’t believe that Disney didn’t do that.

So, here’s how it can play out:.

  • Disney collectively realizes that enough people will pay cash money for the original Star Wars trilogy to justify a DVD set.
  • Disney collectively realizes that those same people will visibly not care if Disney breaks George Lucas’s hands if that’s what it takes to get access to the original footage.
  • Disney releases the dang movies.
  • George Lucas whines about it, and goes back to obsessively trying to edit his epic space operas into something that doesn’t burn his soul.

I think that this is reasonable.

Via… hrm. :clickety click click: Ah, Hot Air Headlines.